Reincarnate is an excellent mechanic. Two things stand out about it on this card: first, I would get rid of the cost, which makes it closer to Undying/Persist and less like Regenerate. (Regenerating creatures often decrease interactivity, since your opponent simply won't block or attack into them as long as you have the mana up.) Second, adding an ETB effect makes this card far too complicated for common, especially since one's opponent can't see the back side of the card while it's on the battlefield.

Yikes! That's a rules nightmare waiting to happen. If I cast this in response to an opponent's creature spell, does it just stay on the stack forever? I see how this is supposed to work with the theme, but there needs to be a simpler way.SummaryThe Reincarnate mechanic is cool, and I think it's strong enough to be one of the set's major themes. In terms of real-world mythology, fitting it into an Egyptian-themed set is quite a stretch. However, since we're not aiming for accuracy, mixing in some Hindu/Jain/Buddhist themes is totally legitimate. The next step for this set is finding more mechanical themes that illustrate the world. Will we keep the idea of multiple factions? How will the color pie interact with these things?

First of all, let me say I am quite glad Ank-Theb is doing well. That being said, I am a bit sad this mechanic was chosen. The mechanic is interesting in general, and flavorful, but it really really does not say Egypt to me.

The theme of the set is Top-down Egyptian, so all my comments are made baring that in mind.

I am not sure that Reincarnate, as implemented above, fits the Egyptian theme. Clearly the Judges do not consider it that much of a stretch. I can understand not wanting to be a slave to a theme (a classic error when designing), yet I think we should approach designing for Ankh-Theb in a similar way with designing for Innistrad. Take the tropes and design to fit them. Reincarnation, and returning from the tomb is not that much of an Egyptian theme to me. Obviously it can mean different things to different people.

I also do not see the point of using double-faced cards here. Reading through MaRo's lines, in his articles about them, he said they will probably bring them back but for something that needs the element of transformation. I do not see that need in the set.

I would be interested to see if we could brainstorm (for U) to see if we could modify it in order to make the proposed mechanic feel a bit more Egyptian, even if we completely eschew the whole tablets of law thing mentioned in the initial submission, but that is, once more, my individual opinion.

I would like to lean a bit more about the evolution of the contest and the aim should be reiterated to better understand what we are doing at the moment.

Even though I pitched the original theme, I understand this is a collective process, and that it can go very far away from my initial conception of it. As it stands now, if this mechanic is set in stone, I feel less inclined to design for this set, since I think we are moving away from what seemed to be important for me in the set. I will, obviously try to continue to contribute, because designing is not about designing what you had in mind but what people want, I just would be sad if we missed our chance to deliver a top-down Egyptian set and we instead designed some mechanics and simply coated them with Egyptian-looking texture.

Fading, I agree that the set should be top-down Egyptian. Some of the submissions were too focused on reveling in death and sacrifice, which felt more like an Aztec set. We shouldn't blend all these culture into one "exotic world" thing, if not for accuracy then for the sake of keeping this and future sets feeling different.

I think the DFC mechanic can be made to feel more like an Egyptian afterlife rather than a reincarnation. I'll put some on the wiki.

My beef with the Egyptian afterlife thingy is that the afterlife is exactly what it says: AFTER life. You go to a place where you are rewarded if you were a good person, or you get dissolved into nonexistence and sustenance for the Gods if you did not adhere to the rules. Coming back to the same world is not part of Egypt.

The fear of being transformed into nothingness brings forth the will to either be good, or to cheat death. If we incorporate the ability to change the rules then the set has a twist to that.

That is why I do not see the point of reincarnate. However we can create a justification, but we will be paying the price in flavor and resonance.

Also while I liked DFCs, bear in mind of all the constraints in numbers of available slots that can be attributed to them in a given large set. Will they carry enough of the set's themes in all 5 colors?

A way to introduce the tablets would be to make only about 5-10 DFCs colored and the rest be tablets of the laws that govern the afterlife that can be changed depending on the circumstances. This would be especially interesting in draft since it would make them more commonly available... forcing different draft strategies.

As far as I can see, the two things that we can't not do are Mummies and Pyramids. Obviously we want to hit as many notes as we can and will eventually need a cohesive world structure, but it is as important if not more to hit egyptian tropes as egyptian culture.

Fading, the version of reincarnate I was thinking of would have the creature return to the battlefield with shadow. It's like my Spirit Life idea except that it uses DFC to be clear. Those creatures will interact only with other creatures that entered the afterlife. It's like they're in their own world.

Sometimes, when a mechanic seems wrong for a particular reason, and you need to think whether that reason applies to a particular execution of that idea or in all possible executions of that idea.

Pasteur - I agree we still have not seen Pyramids and mummies (nor obeliscs, scarabs, hieroglyphs) but what are, according to you, the egyptian tropes you are refering to?

Chah - The fighting in the afterlife part is more Norse than Egyptian in my book. Also DFC is not necessary for the creatures to get shadow when they die, a counter would fit the bill - remember we only have few DFC cards per set.

I obviously am biased, so I will take a day or two to mull the thing over before commenting again :)

We could help Prevent passage out by making it a sorcery and rewriting it so it prevents casting of creature spells until your next turn (which from a mechanical point views seems to be on the up based on RtR).

As for the colour pie I'm a bit confused as to why there are multiple colours here, if this sets multicolour then are still using the original kingdoms set out intially or are we getting new three colour allians ala Shards of Alara. Simply put giving jay's questions in his summary how would we decide upon an answer?

This use of DFCs is pretty neat and definitely has potential. The problem with designing a set online with DFCs is that the only playtesting method available to us (exporting cards from MSE to Octgn) doesn't physically support DFCs, which will make testing them very difficult.

Pasteur's Ankh-Theb submission was my personal favorite, but there are ideas to be drawn from each of them. While I don't think the exile zone should be used as actively as some of the mechanics proposed, you could do similar things with the graveyard. I'll also call out Jacob's Sanctify; not as exciting as detain, but far from irrelevant and very in theme.

I was surprised that the no-twist argument wasn't used against Ankh-Theb, which is still just a straight-up Egyptian set, but I think that was overlooked based on how deep the original theme is. I do suggest that anyone submitting for round three consider adding a twist. Maybe the line between life and afterlife is failing, maybe the gods are getting nasty (Kamigawa / Rise), maybe it's Egypt… In Space!

Challenge from Round 1:Find actual mechanics that support the Egyptian flavor.

Even though I dislike the stretch of reincarnation (and therefore no afterlife), I spent some time to find a way to make it fit thematically and came up with this:

If you do not fulfill some criteria you do not get an afterlife. Normally you would get eaten by the Gods bellow. A white villain takes pity on the devoured souls, changes the rules of getting to the afterlife.

This has an unforeseen side-effect: souls linger on, uneaten, unable to go to the afterlife. That's what I got flavor-wise.

It would require to change a bit the double-faced cards etc etc, but if we are going to stick with reincarnate, we will need something like that.

As I pointed about sanctify in the wiki: Shroud exists already, there is no need to complicate things here. Every use of sanctify/sanctified could be replaced with "target creature gains shroud until eot" and instead of sanctified creatures get Z, creatures with shroud get X

And for the love of Seth, do not set it in Space! If there is to be a twist, I must insist that Top-down Egyptian is more important than adding blueberry banana-hammocks.

From a mechanical standpoint, I like letting black exploit the opponent's graveyard. It plays up black's zero-sum nature (for me to gain something, you have to lose something), and makes black "destroy" effects feel like an advantage over white's exiling.

Corpse Eater 3BCreature - ZombieWhen ~ enters the battlefield, you may exile a creature card from target opponent's graveyard. If you do, ~ enters the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it.2/2

Serve in Death 2BSorceryReturn target creature card from an opponent's graveyard to the battlefield under your control.

Also, I totally dig the honorable death effect on sandsworn fighter-- it feels like he was given a funeral pyre after falling in battle.

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We met as competitors and collaborators in the second Great Designer Search. After the contest was over, we decided we still had things to say about designing Magic: the Gathering. So we started a blog.